It is known in the art that a call is tracked while being moved within a communications domain. Tracking is facilitated by monitoring the involved communication devices. For instance, as a call moves from a first device to a second device and then to a third device, if it is monitored it is possible to clearly identify that the call that left the first device is the same call that eventually arrives at the third device, and not another call that was made to the third device by a different party at the same time that the original call was being moved to the third device. Thus, it is usually required to monitor all communication devices to ensure that the call is properly tracked which can require higher costs for monitored devices instead of unmonitored devices.
If any device is not monitored this could result in a call being divided into multiple contexts. The call context may comprise metadata around the call, e.g., originally called number, data collected from the caller by a voice response application, etc. If the call information is split amongst multiple contexts, the data cannot easily be amalgamated. If a caller provides their customer number to an interactive voice response (IVR) application, which is unmonitored, and this is associated with a first call context, then when the call is transferred to a contact center agent at another device, with a second call context, it is not straightforward to determine that the two contexts are related. Therefore, the customer information that was previously found cannot be presented to the contact center agent.
The devices are monitored by a software application for call tracking purposes. In the case of a contact center, the devices typically monitored may be agent endpoints, and queuing points. If the device where a call is queued is not monitored, it is difficult to determine that a call that leaves the unmonitored device and arrives at a monitored device (e.g. the agent extension) is really the same call, or is another call that was placed directly (i.e., at the same time) to the agent extension. This also impacts the ability to track call statistics, for example.
It has been proposed that a unique number be used to identify calls moving between two monitored domains across an unmonitored domain (e.g., for networking between sites), or to transition from an unmonitored domain to a monitored domain (e.g., unmonitored IVR—Interactive Voice Response). Methods for identifying a call per se include the “Global Call ID” by Cisco, and the ISDN “Call Reference”. Cisco's Global Call ID is used to associate multiple call segments within a call in a monitored domain, i.e., where the telephone switch has a context for the segments of the call. The ISDN Call Reference concept is similarly a call identifier for a particular monitored call segment when the call is associated with a trunk. However, these solutions are not designed for calls moving into an unmonitored domain.